


whatever's blue is leaving

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: PRISTIN (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-06 15:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12820095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: So as not to regret, Sungyeon learns to endure.





	whatever's blue is leaving

**Author's Note:**

> _prompt for[pristin fic exchange](https://pristinexchange.dreamwidth.org/2779.html) 2017: _ underground rapper!yebin + rookie idol!sungyeon. yebin is tired of the wannabe male rappers; sungyeon just wants to sing. they first meet when trainee!sungyeon runs away from practice and sees yebin win her first rap battle. (the rest is history.)
> 
> thank you so much to my recipient, anonymous - i don't know who you are but you can't imagine the joy on my face when i saw that someone else out there adored sungyeon/rena as much as i do? i was really hoping that i could get to know you but i do hope that you see this fic and that it makes you happy! i honestly struggled with this prompt but i'm proud of how it came out.
> 
> thanks also to the mods of the pristin fic exchange <3 (not me, but i have to promote it anyway!) i really liked this exchange... pristin ficdom is not that small but kind of small anyway, i'm glad that we got to do something fun that kind of connects us. i want to be more connected....

The clock ticks slower than usual.

She still has two and a half more classes today, and then practice, and then cram school- “I’m just not gonna go today,” Sungyeon says out loud, but so quietly she can hardly hear it. “One day doesn’t matter. And I’m tired, and exhausted, and I deserve a break.”

The moment she steps out of her high school’s front doors, she almost chickens out completely.

“I knew this would happen, I knew it.” Sungyeon’s feet take her against her will in the direction of We Like Entertainment. “I’ll... go to practice and then skip cram school.”

Sungyeon spends an extra five minutes at the big intersection in her path. If she crosses the road, she goes to practice - if she crosses the main street, she could go home, or to the mall, or- _ding!_

 **MINKYUNG:** where are you? you’re usually early?

Sungyeon can’t not reply...

 **SUNGYEON:** i might skip

 **SUNGYEON:** i probably will

 **SUNGYEON:** i haven’t decided

 **MINKYUNG:** hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you were going to skip you should’ve told me so i could go with you!!! instead of me being here alone!! you better show up

Sungyeon bites her cheek. The decision was made for her.

 

   
 

(On her left, in an alley - scene set, Kang Yaebin, unnamed male. Yaebin looks confident. Her eyes angle like a cat’s.)

As she smirks: “You thought you could win against me?”

Sungyeon stops short in her tracks.

 

   
 

Yaebin walks out of the back lane first, leaving the guy to yell obscenities at the brick wall in front of him, as if it changes anything. He’s someone who never _will_ change.

Sungyeon leans back against the wall, hands behind her, waiting for Yaebin to turn the corner. And pass her, she thinks. Sungyeon wants to see this face for herself.

“Hello?”

Sungyeon startles and looks to Yaebin, eyes wide and a blank stare. She can’t even say anything.

Yaebin’s hair is gray and looks like it’s fraying at the edges. But the cutting gaze is gone. Yaebin stands, there, waiting.

“You were really cool,” Sungyeon says. “Really.”

Yaebin’s eyes change shape again, to moons.

 

   
 

“Bae Sungyeon,” she says, introducing herself so quickly she forgets what sentence structure is. “My name. Is.”

“Kang Yaebin. Remember it for when I’m famous.” Sungyeon nods, sure. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t want to go to singing practice,” Sungyeon tells her. Yaebin chews her gum slowly, and stops so she can speak.

“Then don’t.”

“But-”

“Then go!”

“I don’t-”

Yaebin puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll regret it.”

 

   
 

Sungyeon meets her again in the Starbucks line. Before she can even tap on the familiar girl’s shoulder in front of her, Yaebin turns around, gray wisps of hair fluttering in the warm air.

“Sungyeon,” she says, snapping her fingers in instant recognition. Sungyeon is too ashamed to say that after all of that, she can’t recall the name. Kang Yena? Kang Yewon?

“Hi.” Sungyeon grins flatly, knowing she has time to recall.

“You went to practice?” Yaebin’s eyes fire up.

“Of course,” she answers, wincing as she remembers the scolding, Minkyung’s piercing, looks-can-kill glare, the guilt and the aching legs. But Yaebin was right. It was worth it not to regret.

“I-”

“Next,” the cashier says, voice deep. Yaebin spins around again, rattles off an order she must get every single time she’s here, recites it all with a spring in her step. Sungyeon finds herself lost in thought.

Yaebin moves to the side and Sungyeon realizes she hadn’t chosen anything off the menu yet.

She looks up from her cellphone when Sungyeon finishes paying. “How are things going?”

“Okay,” Sungyeon says. “Good,” she amends. “Better.”

“That’s good to hear,” Yaebin says, cheer in her voice. “It was nice to see you! Oh, a phone call.”

The same for you, Sungyeon would like to say, but with a turn of her head Yaebin waves goodbye.

Holding up a white cup, with her name on it - “Yaebin,” the employee shouts, voice lost to the crowd. Yaebin, too, is unreachable in a sea of people.

“Hey-”

Seeing the eyes on her, seeing the eyes that will be on her, she freezes. The words die on her lips. Sungyeon watches Yaebin go out the door.

“We aren’t friends,” she says, to justify her silence to herself.

As she goes out of the store, holding that cup, looking for her, she says it again.

“We’re not friends.”

 

   
 

Sungyeon’s feet carry her away from the practice room, this time. The winter ground is white, the clouds can hardly be told from the sky- and in the wind, familiar gray hair reflects the sun only to those who are looking.

Sungyeon runs up to her.

 

   
 

“...we’ll get through it.”

Yaebin presses the pause button on her music player app. “How was it? Like the lyrics? The flow?”

Sungyeon furrows her eyebrows. “Uhh... Good? It’s less exciting in a recording.”

Yaebin blinks rapidly and sighs, pulling the headphones out of Sungyeon’s ears in such rapid force it feels like she ripped an earring out. “Well, I don’t know what I was expecting to hear.” She flops down on the couch next to Sungyeon, who looks apologetic. “I wrote it, if you couldn’t tell.”

Sungyeon’s hair is curled haphazardly in waves, dyed a vibrant orange-brown for some exhibition video she filmed last week. Yaebin’s in contrast lies strands astray along the couch cushions, static electricity making it look even more dead than normal.

“I couldn’t,” Sungyeon says. Yaebin sighs again, downcast in an understanding way. “It did... sound great,” she continues, face contorted like she’s completely puzzled. “I just know nothing, and I mean nothing about rapping. Or hip-hop. Or if those are the same thing or not.”

“Wow,” Yaebin says. “Get out.”

“...Okay?”

“No,” Yaebin says, pulling Sungyeon’s arm back down, “No, I didn’t mean that. This is a public space, I can’t tell you what to do.” Yaebin releases her grip and lets out a long, half-muted scream. The librarian on duty, a bookworm college student, side-eyes her but doesn’t say anything.

“You’re really weird,” Sungyeon says, face half mortified and half stifling a laugh.

Yaebin finally smiles. “You’re just going to have to deal with that.”

 

   
 

For two hours on a Sunday evening, Sungyeon forgets all the burdens on her shoulders.

Yaebin’s odd, she drinks a lot and sits on the porch swing outside her mother’s restaurant in the dark night. The wood creaks below her, and her breath is short.

“Come join!” she yells to Sungyeon when she walks into the driveway, house #201. Sungyeon doesn’t want to but she finds herself rocking to the beat of Yaebin’s drunken kicks.

“I’m so tired,” Yaebin says. “Of everything. Of having a damn dream.” Sungyeon nods, looking at her, leaning sideways on the backrest of the swing.

The front door opens with a rough pull, and the screen door rattles as he goes outside. “Who is this?” Yaebin’s brother asks.

“Sungyeon,” Yaebin answers. That’s it.

“Who?” he repeats.

Sungyeon glances at him, back to Yaebin, who looks straight into space. She shrugs.

“I’m Sungyeon.”

He chews at his lip in contemplation before slamming the door back shut.

Yaebin lets out a deep breath. “Finally. He’s annoying.” Sungyeon smiles weakly.

The swing starts to rock again. Sungyeon has her legs folded on the seat, and Yaebin pushes them along, sometimes kicking off so hard that the entire structure shakes. Sungyeon thinks they’re a wrong move away from toppling over, but it doesn’t happen. The swing goes so high...

“It’s like we’re flying,” Yaebin says.

In every story Sungyeon’s heard about people learning to fly in fantasy worlds - it’s always like this - you just have to try. Imagine yourself flying, away from everything tying you to the earth.

(Sungyeon is grounded.)

.

.

.

Sungyeon wants to fight back, but she has no ammunition. The company tells on her like a petty child.

“You know as well as I do that companies don’t take well to skipping practice,” her mother says, detailing the punishment. “And I keep getting these phone calls. You’re going straight to school, straight to practice, cram school, and right back home.”

Two months.

This is already what she was supposed to do but the fear of the edge in her mother’s voice, such a distance from the love she usually feels, it makes her throat close up. Sungyeon thinks she couldn’t sing at all if she were to hear it again.

Sungyeon sits at the kitchen table, arms folded, shaking, and head lying in rest on top of them. “You’re so old fashioned,” Sungyeon mutters under her breath. “No one grounds their kids anymore.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

Sungyeon runs up the stairs to her room, knowing she’s just as childish.

 

   
 

Her mother says she can have one call before she gets her phone taken away.

This is like a prison sentence, Sungyeon insists, curled up in pajamas on her bed. Minkyung sighs wearily on the other end.

(She’ll see Minkyung at practice tomorrow. Actually, she’ll see Minkyung in class tomorrow first. But she doesn’t have Yaebin’s number.)

“I have no hope,” Sungyeon says. “I’m in the shittiest small company ever, I’m pretty sure the contract I signed is a scam designed to trap me here...”

“ _We’re_ in the shittiest small company ever,” Minkyung says. Sungyeon’s lips tremble. “But. I know.”

“I’m afraid of people,” Sungyeon says. “And their stares.”

“I know.”

“But I want... I want...”

“To sing,” Minkyung finishes.

Sungyeon cries. Minkyung adjusts her specs and pretends she’s holding her hand, across the telephone line. The moonlight shines in through her window.

Sungyeon’s mother stands in the doorway.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you.”

“Love you,” Minkyung replies.

“Mhmm.”

“Drink lots of water, okay?”

“I will.”

“And...”

Minkyung holds her hand as long as she can.

 

   
 

“I knew you would.”

Sungyeon debuts. Yaebin stands in front of the flat-screen TV in the hospital lobby, leaning on her crutches. “I’m proud of you,” Yaebin whispers. On the screen, Sungyeon’s performing ‘Truth or Dare,’ she thinks it’s called, with five other girls from that small company. She looked it up on Naver the first time she heard the song. First time that Sungyeon’s clear tone, so easy to recognize, played over the radio.

They’re going to go far.

“Hey.”

Yaebin turns around. Behind her, Sungyeon waves slowly, two meters away. Her manager trails from a distance.

“Sungyeon,” she says. She doesn’t know _what_ to say. It’s been a long time.

“Still writing lyrics?”

“Still,” Yaebin confirms. “And you...”

“I _made it_ , Yaebin,” Sungyeon says, grinning. “It was so hard.”

“I can tell.” She gestures around the hospital interior.

Sungyeon shakes her head. “No, it’s not me. My fr- group’s member Roa fainted. Do you need to sit down? Those crutches look really uncomfortable... What happened?”

“Oh that’s terrible... Accident, sprained ankle.” She falls backwards onto the plastic seat. Sungyeon looks worried, but Yaebin has a satisfied expression on her face. “But I stuck that landing.”

Sungyeon laughs. “She’ll be fine though.” Her manager comes over, shakes her head furiously. “Oh, don’t tell anyone.”

“Sure.” She suddenly remembers she hasn’t said it yet. “Congratulations.” Sincerely.

“Thank you.”

Yaebin, again, finds herself lost for words. Sungyeon awkwardly steps closer.

“I always wondered if you were watching.”

Yaebin’s breath catches. But it’s a good feeling.

“...I think at times it felt like the only eyes on me I could stand.”


End file.
